“But she’s safe?” Havilar asked. “She’s all right?”
“Oh, safe as a ruby in Asmodeus’s strong box,” Lorcan drawled. “She’s with Dahl, after all.” Havilar gave him a knowing look, but Lorcan just glared at her. “As for Mehen, I’m finding him next, and I’ll send him your way. Get around the mountain, toward the peak on the southeast slope. There’s a plateau there where you can meet easily.” He blew out a breath. “They’re traveling with a Red Wizard and her attendant undead. Ghouls and such. Be forewarned.”
Brin belted his sword. “Why are they traveling with undead?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea, nor do I know how far off they are, but I assume you can find some way to occupy yourselves if there’s a wait.” He gave Havilar a significant look of his own, before he leaped into the air, flapped up through the gaps in the canopy, and disappeared from view.
Brin cursed, kicked the dirt, and cursed again. “Gods damn it.”
“It’s not so bad,” Havilar said. “We’d have to climb anyway.”
“That’s not it.” Brin heaved another sigh. “If that had been anyone else. If that had been another devil”-he shook his head-“I wouldn’t have been able to do anything.”
Havilar swallowed and turned back to the pile of gear. She tightened her grip on the glaive, the one thing no one could take from her, even if they knocked the weapon from her hands, burned the haft, and melted down the blade. I just have to get this right, she thought. Maybe nothing else could be fixed, but she’d die taking back the glaive.
“Well, at least we know where we’re headed now,” she said.
There was a limit, Mehen found, to how far the coursing of hot blood would carry a body. He was starved for food that wasn’t Daranna’s dry waybread, company that wasn’t Khochen’s ridiculous playacting, a bed that didn’t lie beside a shambling mockery of a corpse, and most of all for his daughters. One would have guessed that after seven and a half years of their absence, he would bear it better. But when the group paused to send the scouts ahead, to stretch and eat their terrible waybread, Mehen turned to the woods to make water, and stayed alone in the trees to overcome his heavy heart. Never again, he thought. I’ll never let them out of my sight again. It was a lie and he knew it, ugly as it was to realize it. He had no idea what having grown children meant. Except Brin, which wasn’t the same. Or maybe it was? He had no notion anymore.
One thing at a time, he told himself, one thing-
He tapped his tongue against the roof of his mouth and tasted a stranger’s scent. The Red Wizard’s. Near enough to have stuck a dagger in his back.
Mehen spun on her, reaching for his own daggers. Zahnya only smiled.
“A nice private spot,” she said.
“It was,” Mehen said, releasing the weapons. “Did I take too long to piss?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Zahnya said. “I have something you should see.” She pulled a small, clear crystal sphere from her sleeve and shook it once. An image formed around it, swallowing her hand and the ball together: Khochen and Vescaras on watch the night before. There was the fire, the shadows of the unsleeping ghouls, his own sleeping form in the distance.
“Do you have a plan for him?” Khochen asked.
Vescaras didn’t look at her, peering out into the darkness. “I’m hoping we won’t need one.”
“It’s his daughter,” Khochen said, and Mehen narrowed his eyes. “We’re not going to be that fortunate.” She glanced swiftly back at the camp. “Daranna will just grab her, you know. Run him through if need be-or rather, try to.”
“She’s underestimating him less and less,” Vescaras pointed out. “You’re his latest friend, why don’t you prepare him?”
“That’s what I’m saying. I don’t think we can.”
“Then what is there to discuss? We can’t let a possible Shadovar agent run free. You can’t convince Mehen she needs to be caught. Where lies the middle ground?” He turned to Khochen. “Keep him apart when we get there. We’ll get her in irons, and he’ll have to stay calm once he sees we have her. Fair?”
Khochen nodded. “Fair.”
The image disappeared with a pop, and Zahnya smirked at Mehen over her outstretched hand. “Imperfect allies,” she said. “I thought you should know.”
Mehen sighed. The Thayan was so young. “I know.”
“If you like,” Zahnya said, “I could. . delay them. Allow you your access to the camp first.”
“Do you know,” Mehen said, “my daughters are tieflings? Foundlings? I suspect you must, with Khochen asking me every question under the sun, and you listening to every answer. If you think this is the first time someone has taken it into their minds to assume the worst about one of my girls, you are a fool indeed. They were always going to try and capture her. I was never going to stop them. But I will be one of your karshoji bone-puppets if that makes a damned bit of difference in the end.”
Zahnya’s mouth went small. “You’re right. I’ve been listening. I would have thought you’d care enough to protect that girl.”
“This is protecting her,” Mehen said. Even if he was sure down to his marrow that Farideh had not gone off intending to aid the Shadovar, not been intending to play the traitor in wartime, there was still the small, unshakeable doubt that she’d given him for so long-so very long. There was always the pact. There was always the devil. He wouldn’t let the Harpers have her-not easily-but he wouldn’t let her fall either.
Zahnya pulled the crystal into her sleeve once more.
“But many thanks for the offer,” Mehen said with a toothy grin. “And the warning that they’re trying to ‘handle’ me. I’ll make use of that.” He considered her. “They won’t turn on you, you know? Damned Harpers-don’t like breaking their word, even when it seems a bad promise. Especially when it comes to stopping Shar.”
“I’ll believe that when it happens,” Zahnya said. “Truth be told, I’m surprised we’ve come this far. I did expect the bite of your blade, goodman. Perhaps the infamous interrogations of the Waterdhavian Harpers.”
“What do you want in the camp?” Mehen asked.
She looked at him and smiled with a wickedness that reminded Mehen she was not just a girl, and he wondered for a moment if he was in fact outmatched. “To take weapons from Shar.”
“What weapons?”
“We’ll have to see,” Zahnya said. “What I hear is there is unconfirmed.” She looked up the mountain path. “We shall have to see,” she said again. “Take your time, by the way. I doubt you’re the sort of man who needs to be told how long to piss.” She climbed the slope back up to where the palanquin waited.
Mehen tapped the roof of his mouth again, trying to decide what to do next-confront the Harpers, or keep the secret for himself? He froze, the taste of some other human laying on his tongue between the ferns and the moss and the flavor of humus. The nurse log, he thought, turning toward the fern-covered mound of dead tree.
“Which of you is back there?” Mehen said.
Khochen eased around the fallen tree, an impish grin on her face. “I should have guessed you’d be so calm,” she said. “Daranna’s doubts are wearing off on me, I’m afraid.” Her eyes flicked over him. “Are you upset?”
“Not yet,” Mehen said plainly. “Don’t you karshoji cut me out when we get there. I find her, I’ll bring her to you. You find her, you find me and I don’t leave her side. Understand?”
“Fair enough.” Khochen eyed him. “You don’t have a problem with the fact she might be a traitor?”
“She’s my daughter,” Mehen said. “And she can’t betray that.”
“Not even by dealing with devils?”
“Not even by dealing with gods,” Mehen said. “Do you have children?”
“No.”
“Then you have no idea what it would take for me to leave her-you cannot imagine. Don’t ask me to, and I won’t show you why those orphans of the Platinum Dragon want my training.” He rolled his shoulders, as if he could shake the tension from them. His girls might have left him, but he would never leave them. Never.